A fine vislae fellow who’s had
Dizzy spells since he was a lad
Drinks potions for salvation
From potent incantation
Now his spells are cured and he’s sad.
Foundation is the bedrock upon which your character is built. It involves character personality, background, home, family, connections, and knowledge of secrets in the world. It is the nurture aspect of your character (while all the other parts—heart, order, forte, and secret soul—are the nature).
Although there are no mechanics for determining your backstory, the choices you make about your character’s foundation—your house, your connections, and so on—certainly help inform what that backstory is. In other words, your backstory is an emergent aspect of all the choices you make.
A character with a large house and connections to the wealthy and influential people in Satyrine obviously has a very different background than one who has a hidden lair near a refuse heap and has connections to criminals and underworld figures. Use the foundation you choose to inform your backstory, and then develop it as much as you desire, so that the choices you make—from not only your foundation, but also your order, your heart, your forte, and even your secret soul—all create an emergent character history.
This will be developed even more fully when you choose your first character arc.
Your foundation has helped to shape who you are today. All your past experiences have contributed to who you are. While you already have been thinking about personality in terms of heart and the other aspects of your character, now is the time to weave in your background and finalize the kind of character you are.
Obviously, personality is not a game mechanic. While consistency is important, personalities change over time because experiences continue to shape you. It’s not just the past experiences that do that, but the present ones as well. Seeing your character change (and hopefully grow) over the course of play is an important part of Invisible Sun. That’s part of what the character arc system is all about. Personality will help you choose the right character arcs for you, and guide your whole career.
Choosing your foundation is the fifth step of character creation.
Foundation is expressed as an adjective. It doesn’t describe the character as a whole, but rather their background and current circumstances. Past and present. It’s possible that the circumstances of a character can change, but the foundation still describes their origins and background, no matter what happens in the future.
Foundations number eight, and eight is the number of new beginnings, as you are faced with recovering your past while you build a future. The different foundations are:
✦✦ Established
✦✦ Itinerant
✦✦ Connected
✦✦ Eremetic
✦✦Mendicant
✦✦ Iconoclastic
✦✦ Stalwart
✦✦ Bizarre
Each foundation offers the following important characteristics:
Income: This is a monetary amount that the character earns each week. This income is from investments, royalties, past dealings, inheritance, financial support of others, or minor ongoing tasks. In other words, this income is not from current employment or pursuits. This amount is a net profit above and beyond the bare minimum needed to survive, so one can assume the vislae has no bills other than what comes up in play. That means that if a vislae stays home and reads all week, eating very simply, they have no food expenses. If they want better-quality food or if they go out to dinner with friends at some point, that cost is extra.
Initial Savings: This is the amount of money the character has at the start of the narrative.
Hidden Knowledge: This is the starting value for this statistic.
House: When deciding what sort of house the character has, these are the general categories available.
Connections: This is how many levels of connections the character has. These levels can be divided into multiple connections or applied to one.
Initial Motivations: These are general suggestions for the background and current circumstances for the character.
Character Arcs: These are possible starting character arcs, or arcs the player might consider later.
You have a home of your own and are connected to others. This is the most common foundation among vislae.
Income: 50 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 100 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 10
House: Prominent, large, or unique; level 3
Connections: 2 levels
Special: One house augment (level 3 or lower)
Initial Motivations: You have reached a point in life where you can perhaps relax, just a bit. You have a good home, you are known and at least relatively respected, and you have enough income to support a modest lifestyle. Appearances and reputation are important to you, and you probably entertain guests on a regular basis, attend parties and functions, and so forth to maintain or improve your position.
Character Arcs: Establishment, Join an Organization, Romance
You have no permanent domicile, but you do have connections to others in Satyrine (or beyond).
Income: 40 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 120 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 15
House: None
Connections: 2 levels
Special: You start with 1 level in the disguising, surviving, or sneaking skill; you start with a free secret or spell of level 2 or lower.
Initial Motivations: You don’t have a permanent home, but that means that, likewise, you don’t have a lot of upkeep expenses to worry about. You live in hotels, in flophouses, with family or friends, or roughing it on the streets or in the wilderness, depending on where you are. Things like houses and permanency probably aren’t important to you. Secrets, magical lore, and similar pursuits take precedence. You just don’t see the value in settling down. Still, you know the value of social functions and connections.
Character Arcs: Mysterious Background, Redemption, Theft, Undo a Wrong, Uncover a Secret
You have ties to one or more significant people or groups in Satyrine (or beyond).
Income: 50 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 80 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 12
House: Small, average, prominent, large, or unique; level 2
Connections: Depends on house. Small grants 5 levels, average grants 4 levels, and all others grant 3 levels.
Initial Motivations: You have friends and contacts everywhere. You’ve got a house and the financial means to keep you going, but more important, you know know—and are known by—people of importance. To get to where you are (and to stay there), you likely spend time in social pursuits: parties, gatherings, meetings, and so on. You also very likely entertain guests in your home on a regular basis. You’re either an extrovert or an exhausted introvert.
Character Arcs: Develop a Bond, Establishment, Join an Organization, Repay a Debt
You are aloof and have few ties to others.
Income: 60 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 150 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 15
House: Large, hidden, or unique; level 4
Connections: None
Initial Motivations: You are a hermit. You have a nice home and a decent amount of money—your essentials are covered. This is wonderful, because you have your own personal pursuits to focus on. You spend a lot of time alone, but you may still have friends. You don’t, however, have connections to large groups and might be relatively unknown to most people (and if so, you probably like it that way).
Character Arcs: Build, Creation, Justice, Solve a Mystery, Train a Creature, Uncover a Secret
You have no permanent domicile and few or no connections to others.
Income: None
Initial Savings: 10 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 20
House: None
Connections: None
Special: You start with 1 level in the disguise, survival, or stealth skill; you start with a free secret or spell of level 3 or lower.
Initial Motivations: You have little in the way of possessions, but that’s probably because you put no value in them. You are a loner, or at least not connected to any major groups—you may still have close friends. Knowledge, self-improvement, and personal goals are what drive you. You probably don’t care what others think or believe. You live on the streets or on the road, with family or friends, or perhaps some combination thereof. You own what you can carry, and probably don’t know where your next meal is coming from, but that’s fine with you. Your mind is on loftier concepts.
Character Arcs: Defeat a Foe, Growth, Learn, Revenge, Solve a Mystery, Theft, Uncover a Secret
You work against or seek to bring down one or more significant organizations.
Income: 50 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 100 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 12
House: Small, average, hidden, or unique; level 3
Connections: Depends on house. Small grants 2 levels, average grants 1 level, and all others grant none.
Initial Motivations: Although you have some comforts and maybe some connections, your main drive is destroying or overthrowing a major group, organization, or class, like the Church of Midnight, the Court of Nous, the upper classes of Satyrine, or the Deathless Triumvirate. This might be an endeavor that you take on alone, or you might work with others—either a subversive group with the same goal as you or the organization’s chief rival. Whomever it is that you oppose, they likely wronged you in some way, although perhaps your stance is merely ideological.
Character Arcs: Avenge, Defeat a Foe, Finish a Great Work, Justice, Rescue, Revenge, Undo a Wrong
You are a devoted ally and supporter of one specific organization.
Income: 50 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 100 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 10
House: Small, average, unique; level 3
Connections: Depends on house. Small grants 2 levels, and others grant 1 level.
Special: 3 levels of connection to group supported
Initial Motivations: You have a strong connection to a particular organization or group and spend a great deal of time or energy focused on them. Perhaps you are a devout member of a religion or a devoted defender of a cause, an order, or a class of people. You have modest means, but it’s enough to take care of the essentials while you focus on more important things.
Character Arcs: Defense, Finish a Great Work, Instruction, Join an Organization, Justice, Repay a Debt
You have a reputation for being strange and having a very strange house (at least, that’s what people say), so you have no connections.
Income: 30 crystal orbs
Initial Savings: 70 crystal orbs
Hidden Knowledge: 10
House: Prominent or unique; level 4
Connections: None
Special: One house augment (level 4 or lower)
Initial Motivations: You’re weird, you live in a weird place, and you don’t care who knows it. Which is good, because everyone knows it. Your reputation for oddness precedes you, to the point where you can hear people whispering behind your back or see them step to one side as you walk down the street. You have very modest means and aren’t great at saving.
Character Arcs: Creation, Growth, Finish a Great Work, Mysterious Background, Transformation
A vislae’s house is an extension of themselves. Vislae houses are always magical. Always strange. Always harboring secrets. Always.
What each house contains is usually up to each vislae, but most have a small library (or at least a large bookcase), a work area for rituals or experiments, and quarters for any associated creatures or beings, such as a familiar, that might be present. Many vislae are collectors or even hoarders, and their homes become strange museum-like collections or menageries.
Houses are assumed to be furnished, but quite modestly, with little beyond the average. Vislae should spend some of their savings to buy extra or quality furnishings.
When first determining the specifics of a character’s house, start with their foundation, which will determine the type of house. The type might suggest its size, its location, or both. Next, determine the starting peculiarity. This is the known strangeness about the house: it’s haunted, it’s collapsing but still standing, it’s cursed, or it has some other unique aspect that makes it clear that this is no ordinary building. (Meanwhile, the GM can concoct as-yet-undiscovered strangeness about the house.)
When players advance their characters, they can advance their house instead with augments. These are also known as house secrets. They work just like character secrets, have their own levels, and are gained by spending Acumen (1 Acumen per level).
Players can also increase the level of their house by 1 for the price of 1 Crux. Level suggests not only the general potency of the house (and its doors, walls, and so on) but also what augments can be applied to it. In general, a house must be at least the same level as an augment it might have.
Vislae houses at character creation have modest furnishings and appointments appropriate to their nature. A large house in a nice neighborhood will have nice furnishings appropriate to the rooms of the house. A hidden house in a junkyard will have serviceable furnishings mostly made out of refuse. Additional furnishings—anything specific, particular, or luxurious—must be purchased.
Vislae house types include:
✦✦ Small
✦✦ Average
✦✦ Large
✦✦ Prominent
✦✦ Unique
✦✦Hidden
All vislae houses have at least one secret room in addition to those listed. (Additional secret rooms can be obtained by players as augments, or placed by GMs as additional peculiarities.) Secret room sizes depend on the size of the house. For example, small houses have very small secret rooms—more a compartment than a room, really—while large houses have large secret rooms and perhaps two different secret passages that connect to it.
This is a very small house (on average, three small rooms). It can also be an apartment or a flat, or a single room in a large house owned by someone else.
Augments: A small house can have up to five augments.
Example: Daerdra lives in a small, rickety shack literally hanging over the edge of the Narrow Sannyasa River. Its main floor consists of a single room and an attached kitchen. Daerdra’s bedroom is in a tiny loft above them both.
Example: Liu-Bak keeps a room in the manor house of Lady Gyellis. He takes his meals with her a few times a week, her modest library is at his disposal, and her servants answer to his needs within reason, but the amount of living space he has is very limited.
Example: Chril lives in a large old house, sharing it with four other vislae. She has her own room and shares a greatroom, a kitchen, and a large storeroom.
This is a typical house with five or six rooms. It could also be a large apartment, or perhaps a suite in a large house owned by someone else, but these would be exceptions to the rule. Average houses sometimes have yards or gardens of modest size.
Augments: An average house can have up to seven augments.
Example: Josef lives in a nondescript house in the middle of the street.
This is a sprawling manor or a high, multileveled tower. It probably has at least ten to twelve rooms. Large houses usually have yards or gardens, often with a wall or fence, and perhaps even an outbuilding or two.
Augments: A large house can have up to eight augments.
Example: Menthla inherited a large house and the surrounding walled estate when her parents died. The house has six bedrooms, a study, a dining hall, a parlor, a large kitchen, and a variety of storerooms and miscellaneous chambers.
A prominent house isn’t particularly large or fancy, but it is known. This might have to do with its appearance or perhaps its important or prominent location. It could also be that the house has a history of significance. It is in all other respects like an average house.
Augments: A prominent house can have up to seven augments.
Example: Yarcy’s house is located on the corner of Hullen and Bannock streets, at the edge of the busy Lovelast Square.
Example: Echale lives in the infamous Spectrum House, where Baron DeHalik was murdered by the Unseen Children. His ghost still haunts the house, and vislae visit from time to time (welcome and unwelcome) to commune with his spirit.
As the name implies, unique houses aren’t like other homes. There is no “typical” unique house—that’s the point. However, they are usually fairly small, with only three to five rooms at most. Essentially, they are houses that seem like anything but—a half-sunken ship in the harbor, the top of a clock tower, or the shell of an enormous snail.
Augments: A unique house can have up to six augments.
Example: Sistentin makes his home within the head of a titanic statue of Rhol that rises high above Bookmaven Street. His home is very small, but it offers a unique perspective as well as an interesting location.
Example: Lownan’s home is forever held aloft by a massive hot air balloon that permanently floats over a firehouse in Fartown. He has a rope ladder that he can raise and lower to gain access.
Example: Graun the Knife’s home lies within an extradimensional space accessed at the end of an alleyway. It’s not large, but it’s also not laid out in a way that makes Euclidean sense—each room, in fact, is its own tiny dimension.
A hidden house is located somewhere that most people would not expect someone to take residence, such as in a ruin, a sewer, a cave, or in the back of a business. Due to their obfuscated nature, hidden houses are typically small, with just three or four small rooms.
Augments: A hidden house can have up to five augments.
Example: Une Ombra lives in a set of hidden rooms accessed through a secret doorway in the back of a fish and chip shop in Fartown. The rooms are located behind and underneath the shop, and she and the shopkeeper have an understanding.
Every house has a peculiarity (actually, it probably has more than one, but you start the narrative knowing about only one). You can choose any of the following for your house’s peculiarity and then develop the details to flesh it out. Expect that the GM will use this peculiarity as fodder for a story or two at some point, although they’re not required to do so.
✦✦ Atop a burial
✦✦ Ritual site
✦✦ Religious site
✦✦Historically significant location
✦✦Moves
✦✦ Disputed ownership
✦✦ Difficult landlord
✦✦ Squatters
✦✦ Frequently burgled
✦✦ Cursed
✦✦ Teetering
✦✦ Leaky (even in fine weather)
✦✦ Drafty (even in fine weather)
✦✦ Condemned
✦✦ Growing
✦✦ Improving
✦✦ Always cluttered, no matter what
✦✦ Inexplicably noisy
✦✦ Entrance is something else (an open book, a mirror)
✦✦ Structure is mainly glass
✦✦ Structure is mainly mirrors
✦✦ Structure is mainly ice
✦✦ Structure is mainly mist
✦✦ Structure is mainly living trees
✦✦ Structure is mainly bones
✦✦ Structure is mainly dead insects
✦✦House appearance changes, depending on visitor
✦✦House appearance changes, based on dreams of owner the previous night
✦✦Windows show random locales
✦✦ Doors sometimes lead elsewhere
✦✦ Slowly liquefying
✦✦ Slowly disintegrating
✦✦ Slowly moving out of phase
✦✦ Slowly disappearing into another dimension
✦✦ Slowly teleporting somewhere else
✦✦ Ghosts
✦✦ Grigs
✦✦ Demonic entity
✦✦ Sentience
✦✦ Luck
✦✦ Elderbrin vagabond
✦✦ Truespider
✦✦ Spiders
✦✦ Ants
✦✦ Termites
✦✦ Roachgoblins
✦✦ Inexplicable odor
During the first game session, all players will collaborate to develop the neighborhood the vislae’s house is in, nearby points of interest, and so on. See The First Session for more information.
Players can choose one of the following ready-made houses if they wish. Each has its own PC handout sheet included with the game that provides more description and a map. Some houses have a special benefit to compensate for extreme difficulties.
The rat’s house is in the sewers beneath the city. To reach it, one must climb down through a particular hinged sewer grate, the location of which is known only to the owner, and the grate can be locked. The “house” is really a few damp, dank underground chambers, but it offers a true hideaway.
The crooked house appears to be askew in some way. Not necessarily run-down, but originally built with some sort of quirk or flaw. It leans precariously and looks like it should be condemned, despite the fact that it is quite sturdy. Still, its shape earns it gentle mockery from time to time.
Special Benefit: The crooked house has not one but two secret rooms known to the owner.
Sturdy and strong, built on a firm foundation, the house on the rock is in many ways the opposite of the crooked house, at least by outward appearance. It is well known by people throughout the city as a landmark and is praised for its beautiful exterior.
The interior of the house is a cluttered hoard of all manner of strange decor, bric-a-brac, and various oddments. No matter what steps are taken, the house remains a cluttered, disorganized mess. It takes literally twice as long to find anything in the house, and at least once, something really significant is lost for good.
Special Benefit: If you take a day to search the house, you can find a random object of importance or value you didn’t know was there.
The ghost house is haunted by a plethora of spirits that moan and wail at inconvenient times, move things about subtly, and leave strange symbols etched on the walls and furnishings that are gone the next day. The ghosts speak to those who dream in the house, whisper to those who sit in the house quietly, and suggest subconscious thoughts with their symbols.
The chaotic suggestions of the ghosts have caused the various owners to build seemingly meaningless rooms, staircases to nowhere, and corridors that turn back on themselves. It’s more maze than house. Many of the purposeless rooms stand empty.
Special Benefit: The owner of the house can ask the spirits a question and, about half the time, get an answer in his dreams the following night if he sleeps in the house. Often, however, the dreams are confused and strange—rarely is the answer straightforward.
Bigger on the inside than the outside, the shifting house’s layout is always in flux. From the outside, the house appears to be very small—more like a storage shed in size. Inside, the house is of average size, and seems even larger because the rooms shuffle and shift.
Starting characters’ houses are very simply furnished and equipped. This includes kitchen tools and supplies, a few other miscellaneous tools (perhaps a hammer, a hand mirror, a flashlight, a few pens, and so on), grooming supplies, personal effects (a few framed photos or artwork), a few books, and other odds and ends. In addition, characters start with a few changes of nice clothing, a bit of simple jewelry (if they wish), a bag or satchel of some kind, a coat or cloak, their ephemera, and their Testament of Suns. (Apostates, of course, start with a vertula kada in place of a Testament.)
For a starting character, the Testament of Suns or vertula kada is invested with enough of their essence that if they do not have it with them, any challenge they face is 1 level higher until they get it back. Worse, if someone gets their hands on it and uses magic against the character it is tied to, the magic is always 2 levels higher than normal against them.
Vislae have a wide variety of goods they can spend their money on. Starting characters can spend their “Initial Savings” from their foundation on anything they can afford.
Most vislae spent time in Shadow. When they returned to the Actuality, they brought something back with them. Thus, all vislae retain a Shadow skill and a Shadow memento.
Everyone starts with a Shadow skill. A Shadow skill is something learned in Shadow, within the bonds of one’s false life. A vislae who lived as a firefighter might retain one of the physical skills she had—climbing, perhaps, or breaking through barriers. A vislae who had a boating hobby might retain the ability to sail. One who worked as an accountant could keep a skill in mathematics. This level 2 skill can be anything that could be learned in Shadow, from sailing to cabinetry. It can simply be a profession, like “sous chef” or “accountant” (although a focused skill is better than a broad skill). “Criminal” is likely too broad, but “stealth” or “lying” is fine. Something with very little application in the Actuality, like “computer science,” is probably not a good choice. But ultimately, the decision is yours.
Once ensconced back in the Actuality, most vislae call to them an object from their false life that had meaning to them. This might be something purely sentimental, like a photo, or something with practical value, like an automobile or a weapon. The idea, mostly, is for the memento to be something that helps establish the character’s personality, like a stereo or a coffee maker—an object that says something about who they were and who they remain. Vislae trapped for so long in Shadow can’t help but be shaped by it. Even once back in the Actuality, with memories and knowledge of the true world returning, they still retain a bit of their false life.
All vislae returned to the Actuality with one object taken from Shadow. Regardless of what it is, the object works just fine in the Actuality. If it’s something that shouldn’t work there, like a television (no one’s broadcasting) or a smartphone (there’s no signal and no satellites), it still works. The television gets channels from Shadow and the smartphone can access Shadow’s internet.
However—and this is a big however—in the Actuality, things that would have meaning only in Shadow are seen as the obvious and downright absurd deceptions that they truly are. A television show, even a news program or a documentary, appears fake, silly, and vapid. Information gained on a smartphone is meaningless. Texts and phone calls are mostly nonsense.
Vislae are odd and varied creatures. The magic within them manifests in strange ways. Most call these quirks. Quirks are neither advantages nor disadvantages, and if they occur at random times, you never have control over them. They’re just unique aspects that mark a vislae. You should choose one from the following list of quirks or use these as examples to make up your own.
✦✦ If I’m not touching gold with my bare skin, I get jittery.
✦✦ Green plants that I touch turn blue for a brief moment.
✦✦ Everyone says, upon meeting me, that I remind them of someone, but they can never think of who.
✦✦ I can unfailingly sense the sexual orientation of anyone I see.
✦✦Magical potions give me hiccups for a few minutes.
✦✦ The touch of stone on my bare skin gives me hives.
✦✦ I seem to have swapped the concepts of sober and intoxicated. I must imbibe to stay sober, and intoxication is my normal state.
✦✦ Food flavor to me seems related to color more than anything else. All green foods taste more or less the same, all white foods seem similar, and so on.
✦✦ In my dreams each night, I see the same woman, but I have no idea if she’s real.
✦✦ Once every few days, I see the previous minute of my life transposed over the present minute (so I see both at once).
✦✦ No matter where I go, there’s always a frog, a moth, or a beetle nearby, usually noticeable by me.
✦✦ I have such amazing dreams that I can’t wait to go to sleep each night.
✦✦ I am allergic to 3:57 p.m. I always sneeze at that time.
✦✦ I can’t talk to all animals, or even all rats, but I can talk to one particular rat. His name is Samuel.
✦✦ Small metal objects cling to me as if my whole body were slightly magnetic.
✦✦ I’m incapable of saying the word “vislae.”
✦✦My hair grows at ten times the normal rate, forcing me to go to the barber (or take some similar step) every four to five days.
✦✦ There’s always a bit of sand in my pocket.
✦✦ Alcohol has no effect on me, but magical potions and the like give me a bit of a buzz.
✦✦ I can smell silver as though it were as potent as garlic.
✦✦ The temperature of any room I am in is a bit lower than normal.
✦✦ If I crack open an egg, it always has a double yolk.
✦✦ Clothing I wear slowly turns purple over time, no matter what color it was to begin with.
✦✦ Goats and butterflies are always terrified of me.
✦✦ I am fluent in a language I learned in a dream, but I’ve never found anyone else who can speak it.
✦✦My reflection in mirrors is always slightly off in different ways—a button, a cowlick of hair, a mole, or something else slightly out of place.
✦✦ If I wish it, I can give someone the exact location of my house simply by touching them.
✦✦ I read printed books and other text twice as fast as normal, but read handwriting twice as slowly.
✦✦ I’m always a little bit cold if the sun is not up.
✦✦ When I kiss, I always give a tiny electric shock.
✦✦ My tears are like quicksilver, but harmless.
✦✦ If I’m outside, the wind near me blows a bit more strongly when I laugh.
✦✦ Dogs love me, unless they are trained to be attack dogs.
✦✦ My shadow flits and moves in small ways when it really shouldn’t.
✦✦ My pupils bear the symbol of the Indigo Sun.
✦✦ Every once in a while, I accidentally have someone else’s dreams.
✦✦ My hair is silver. Not just in color, but literally very thin strands of metal.
✦✦ Every few days, I hear snippets of dialogue spoken years ago by people likely now dead.
✦✦ At midnight each night, I cease to exist for about four seconds.
✦✦ When I touch wood, I get a brief vision of the tree that it came from.
✦✦ Minor fires, such as candle flames, don’t hurt me. In fact, they feel nice. Fires greater than that burn me normally.
✦✦ I can selectively turn down the volume of any loud noise I hear (only for me), although I can’t silence it.
✦✦ If someone says the word “fungus,” I burst into tears.
✦✦ If I clean something, it appears cleaner and newer than anyone else could likely make it.
✦✦ Every other day or so, I leave a single prominent footprint where I walk, as though it’s been scorched onto the ground.
✦✦ Cats seem agitated by the sound of my voice.
✦✦ My hair is always wild, as if affected by an electric current, no matter what I do (short of shaving it all off ).
✦✦ I inherently know the language of a particular form of earthworm. Unfortunately, they rarely have anything to say.
✦✦ Radios get staticky around me.
✦✦ People swear that, from far away, I look like two people, not one.
Connections show the relationships that a character has with groups, organizations, and classes of people in the world.
Connections are like skills. They have a level and are thus rated on a scale of 0 to 4. They are purchased like narrative skills, so the cost is 2 Acumen per level.
They are not as broadly applicable as skills, but in specific situations they are likely better than skills. They always add to your venture when taking on an appropriate challenge related to that group. This includes any sort of interaction, such as persuasion, deception, intimidation, or gaining favors. In certain cases, other actions—those depending on having information, insight, and friendly relationships with a group—may also benefit.
Further, for certain actions, the GM might require a prerequisite of a certain level of connection to even try it. For example, if you want to read an ancient text important to the Church of Midnight, you might need at least Connection 2 to ask for permission to view it. Not any random person off the street, no matter how persuasive, will succeed.
The following are potential groups that you might be connected with.
✦✦ Criminals
✦✦ High society
✦✦ Nobility
✦✦ Military
✦✦ Entertainers
✦✦ Merchant class
✦✦ Tradespeople and crafters
✦✦ Lower class
✦✦ Homeless
✦✦ The Intelligentsia
✦✦ Watchers
✦✦ Vatic Order
✦✦ The Handasah
✦✦ Church of Midnight
✦✦ Spearhead of the Unknowable
✦✦ Emotion Mills Consortium
✦✦ Chalmara Sodality
✦✦ The Abnormous
✦✦ Knights of the Name
✦✦ Unseen Children
✦✦ The Ov
✦✦ Xan Weir
✦✦ Troubadours of the Ancient Path
✦✦ Cahdedron
✦✦ The Dreamery
✦✦ Court of Nous
✦✦ Vermin (including roachgoblins and ratgoblins)
✦✦ Spiders (and truespiders)
✦✦ Ants
✦✦ Demons
✦✦ Angels
✦✦ Elderbrin
✦✦ Lacuna
✦✦ The Dead
✦✦ Residents of the Pale
✦✦ The Dark
✦✦ Residents of the Red
✦✦ Residents of the Green
✦✦ Residents of the Blue
✦✦ Residents of Silver
✦✦ Residents of Gold
✦✦ Specific religion
✦✦ Specific organization
✦✦ Residents of a specific half-world or other locale
Bonds seem like connections at first blush, but they work much differently. First and foremost, bonds indicate relationships with individuals, not groups. Second, they don’t work like skills. Instead, each has a benefit and a drawback. They are less mechanical and more story-based. NPC bonds grant benefits that amount to information or favors, depending on the identity of the NPC. They also have drawbacks, which amount to the fact that the NPC probably wants something from the PC as a part of the relationship.
A character can have from zero to three NPC bonds when the game begins. Thereafter, they cost 1 Acumen each.
While the PC and the NPC aren’t friends, they know each other well and have likely worked or studied together. The associate is in the same circles as the PC—the same order, the same guild, the same group, or something similar.
Benefit: The associate can provide the PC with information, rumors, insights, or answers to questions about the past or present of the organization they both share. For example, a fellow Vancian can provide the latest gossip about the order or share a relevant story about the order’s past when asked.
Drawback: Associates want as much as they give. In other words, the associate may press the PC for information or opinions. Also, at least once during the PC’s career, the associate will call in favors from the PC and ask for a task or mission to be done, probably in the service of the organization they both belong to.
The PC knows an NPC in an important or vital position in the hierarchy of some other group, circle, or class. The PC and NPC are not friends—in fact, they likely hardly know each other—but for whatever reason, the contact is willing to provide information or services.
Benefit: A contact can use their position to provide information or even a favor. A contact might provide the current password to get into a secure area or ensure that a PC’s request is passed up the hierarchy to the right place. The contact won’t utterly betray their organization. All of this requires direct communication with the contact, and, often, the contact wants to keep their relationship with the PC a secret. No one wants to be seen as an informant. This usually involves some level of subterfuge or subtlety. Failure to do so probably results in the loss of the contact.
Drawback: The contact always wants something in return. Favors or information need to be paid for with money, information, or return favors. At least once during the PC’s career, the contact will call in favors from the PC and ask for a task or mission to be done, probably in the service of their organization.
It’s always good to have friends.
Benefit: Aside from companionship, friends can share information, offer discounts, grant special treatment, or look the other way at the right time. The benefit depends on the position, occupation, and other specifics of the friend—everyone’s different. A friend might even put themselves in danger to help, but would a real friend ask them to do so?
Drawback: Friends sometimes need your help at the most inopportune times. They are needier than associates or contacts. Failure to give as much as you get in a friendship results in the loss of the friendship.
Loss of a friend results in 1 Despair.
The PC and the NPC have been out of contact for quite some time, but back in the day they were quite close. This might be a buddy from the military, a school chum, an old boyfriend, a past mentor, or an old friend of the family. The old friend is likely to be in a position of influence or value far from the PC’s current normal circles (otherwise, they wouldn’t be an “old” friend). There is no ongoing relationship.
Benefit: Old friends are usually good for one really sizable favor and then that’s it. This might be a major secret, a free gift, or direct aid in a dangerous situation. To gain this favor, the PC must reestablish contact with the old friend and spend some time reforging the bond.
Drawback: Contacting an old friend can stir up old issues, sometimes with a new twist. For example, the old friend shares a way to repay an old debt, reveals that an old truth isn’t true at all, or threatens to spill one of the PC’s old secrets.
Loss of an old friend, or sometimes simply reconnecting with an old friend, results in 1 Despair.
Romance can be wonderful. It can be terrible. It can be both things at the same time. One of the deepest, most rewarding, and most demanding relationships is that of a lover. A lover can be a spouse, someone in a casual relationship, or anything in between. The romance can be new or long established. The lover might live with the PC.
Benefit: Aside from affection, love, and companionship, a lover can offer real secrets, large benefits, or big favors. The benefits are often deeper or more substantial than those gained from a friend. If a friend would give you a discount at their restaurant, for example, a lover might give you free meals.
Drawback: Lovers often expect more than friends. They expect time and attention. They expect favors and secrets. At least once during the PC’s career, the lover will ask for a very big favor, probably in the form of a major task or mission to be completed. Lovers can feel neglected or jealous. They can be tempted to find a different lover. Or lovers can just grow apart.
Loss of a lover results in 2 Despair.
Most everyone has relatives, usually many relatives, so this bond specifically refers to one who has a close relationship with the PC and is in a position to offer something valuable.
Benefit: Sometimes a relative offers a character a place to live, or just a place to hide. Most often, however, relatives offer benefits similar to those granted by friends or lovers.
Drawback: Although relatives rarely want payment or anything of the sort in return for their help, most expect time and attention. At least once during the PC’s career, the relative will call on family ties to ask for a very big favor from the PC, probably in the form of a major task or mission to be completed.
Loss of a relative results in 2 Despair.
Although technically characters are not finished until you go through the process of the first session, there are a few things you will want to determine before you get to that stage.
Your character needs a name. Some PCs retain their Shadow name, while most abandon it for the more colorful name they had before. Still others adopt a whole new post-Shadow name.
Although we’re all familiar with Shadow names, Actuality names are usually more involved and grandiose, but have no cultural or regional meanings. This is because in the Actuality, people are called what they want to be called. You are not named by your parents with a label befitting your heritage (or rather, you are, but that is your child name). When you achieve adulthood, you choose whatever name you wish, based on whatever sounds appealing to you.
A few people choose to retain some kind of family name, but even these were made up by someone in the past based on what sounded interesting, so again—no limitations.
Appearance is significant to most vislae. Eventually, you might want to go to one of Satyrine’s magical changeries, which offer elaborate (and expensive) processes that can drastically alter your appearance, sometimes defying logic. Changeries can alter your face or your hair, but they can also replace your head and neck with a shining starburst. They can give you multiple arms or spiderlike legs. There are no limits in the changeries for those with enough to spend.
Until then, however, your character can appear as you wish, but you start as a relatively normal looking human (although that, of course, still offers many billions of combinations, as we see every day when we walk down the street). Your clothing can be simple or flamboyant. The styles in Satyrine in regard to clothing, jewelry, hair, and body art go way, way past anything you’ll see in Shadow.
Be imaginative.
Each sun has its own inherent language. All characters begin knowing how to speak the language of Indigo. The vast majority of the time, this is what PCs will be speaking. Further, elderbrin and some other peoples have their own language, so using such options for variant PCs grants a fluency in that language. Last, all vislae speak a secret language, sometimes known as the Invisible Tongue. It’s most useful in communicating mystical concepts, and it makes heavy use of specific gestures as well as spoken words.
Languages from Shadow are fleeting and forgotten quickly (unless chosen as a Shadow skill). Only if you are pulled back into Shadow do they come back to you.
You have your skills from your heart, and perhaps your order or foundation as well. You’ll be able to get more as you advance by spending Acumen. All you need to know right now is that each level adds +1 to the related action.